The sweetest thing...

...is my little Sadie all wrapped up and ready to go out for a stroll on a Sunday affternoon! Ok, I would need a cattle prod to make them walk anywhere with the grown-ups these days - apparently it's just not cool to be seen hangin' with the olds!!! Oooooh, where did my babies go? Lol! Well, actually they grew up into little girls, then bigger girls. My eldest hits high school after the summer hols - how did that happen? Eeek!! Sadie is still very sweet but if we are walking somewhere now, there has to be a park or some other carrot dangling to get us to our destination. Sadly, gone are the days when we just went out for a stroll to get out and enjoy the fresh air. In fact just getting anywhere these days without world war three breaking out amongst the ranks is pretty impossible. I'm as impatient as they are hopelessly unconcerned with arriving anywhere on time!!! I suppose that's why the elders of the family tell you to enjoy them while they're little, meaning because once they have developed a mind of their own, you've had it!!!. Lol!!
    So, hot off the scrapbooking table this morning comes this:-

   And it originated from this PageMap here -

And as usual, didn't really turn out much like the original at all! Haha! But well, we all need a starting point and sometimes looking through magazines etc. doesn't help me much as a lot of LO's have everything but the kitchen sink stuck to them and it's hard to get a handle on where to start but that's probably just me. Don't get me wrong, I do love those gorgeously layered pages they are a feast to behold but I bet they take forever to put together and goodness knows sometimes it takes me long enough to get this simpler style done!

    With this one I had intended to go all monochromatic with just the background as the main colour but it just wasn't coming together easily and I thought it might look a bit rubbish anyway once it was finished. Who wants to waste their time and stash making a dog's dinner? So I started introducing a bit of colour here and there and ended up where I always do, i.e. in my comfort zone but maybe a bit more muted than usual.

    I've used Anna Griffin lace stamps round the edge of the 12x12 cardstock and round the photo itself. I think that took the longest to do as you have to cut the corners accurately at a 45 degree angle so they make a frame with mitred edges. Mine haven't matched exactly at the corners but that's ok - it would take too long to figure that bit out. Back in the old days when graphic designers did everything at a tilted board with a parallel motion I'm sure that could have been achieved a bit more easily but y'know, that's not what scrapbooking's about. Not for me anyway. It's about the spontaneity of watching a page evolve as you are going - I never know what a page is going to turn out like when I set out. I start off with a pic or two, knowing I want to use certain products and that generally leads the way. The more time I want to give to the layout then the more intricate and layered it becomes. The thing that's most important for me is that the photo doesn't get lost under heaps of other visuals that make you wonder what the main focus of the page is.

    The huge chipboard flower at the top left is from a kit I bought a long time ago. It's from Prima and came in a set that had a 12x12 sheet of stamps and matching diecut shapes in chipboard and corrugated cardboard. It's great to rediscover old stash! Who knows what else might be lurking at the back of my craft shelves...

    Have a happy Sunday all, get rocking those PageMaps!!!

Love,  Jak

xxx